Instagram yesterday announced a major change, allowing third-party applications to schedule publications. Ironically, this functionality will not be found in the official application, and we will have to follow a series of steps to be able to use it.

Hootsuite is one of the best known platforms when managing profiles in social networks, being used by many companies and professional profiles. Now they have just announced that it is now possible to program and publish through their tool.

First step: create a company profile on Instagram

If we want to program and publish content on Instagram through Hootsuite, before we will have to convert our personal profile into a company profile. Before doing so, let’s review the main differences :

Normal / personal profile :

• You can not access your account analytics
• The share button on Facebook will do so in your personal profile or the page you have chosen
• There is no contact button on your bio
• In the profile biography, the business category is not included
• You can not include a physical address to click on your bio
• You can not promote content that you have already published. You can only create ads through the Instagram ad manager.

Company profile :

• Access to metrics to measure the effectiveness of your publications
• The share button on Facebook will post your photos and videos on a fan page
• A contact button is included in the bio
• The business category you have on your fan page appears on your profile
• A link to the physical address that can be clicked on is included
• You can promote publications to enhance your results

Now that we know what the differences between the two types of profiles are, we will know how we can convert our personal profile into a company profile . If you have multiple accounts, you will first have to select the one you want to convert.

Then we will have to go to configuration and select the option to “change to the company profile, where you will ask us to log in to Facebook, in order to connect it with our fan page, if you do not have a Facebook page you will have to create it.

Once activated you can include an email address, map and phone number(although it is not mandatory). Now that we have our company profile, we can now use Hootsuite to schedule and publish content.

Using Hootsuite to schedule and publish

From Hootsuite we can manage our publications on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and now also Instagram. Adding our company profile will be as simple as with other social networks.

I have to say that I had to create a new free account to test this functionality, since with my old account I was asked to update to a payment plan to be able to use the web version (in the applications it works correctly).

Once we have logged into Hootsuite, we will simply have to click on “add Instagram profile”, enter the credentials and then ask you to connect your Facebook profile .

When we have integrated our company profile to Hootsuite, both in the web version and in mobile applications we can add content and program it. At the moment it is not possible to program videos in the web version.

Alternative for those who do not want to make a company profile

We must know that all posts that we post on Instagram will also appear on the Facebook page that we have connected. If you have not wanted to create the company profile , there is an alternative, but it is a bit more tedious.

Simply we will have to schedule the publication and arrival the hour we will appear a notification in Instagram , if we accept it it will be published automatically.

Anyway it is a good solution for those who want to leave work done on another device (since the computer is more comfortable) and then give it to publish every time a notification arrives.